If liquids "seek a level", how can there be reports of sea levels rising at various specific points along coasts? Setting aside variations in levels due to temperature of the water, do not the levels of all inter-connected bodies of water have to be equal?

ok new guy...
I understand what you trying to convey. All inter-connected water bodies have to have the same level of water across the world.

Well if you rule out the influence of sun and moon's gravity, your perception about the sea-level is in right way around the reality. But if you are including these other gravitational influences, then it will briefly flaw your idea about the sea-level. Gravity has a far-reaching influences over the large surface of sea. Besides, gravity also affect our atmosphere too, thereby slightly changing the atmospheric pressure on the earth's surface (sea).

Although I do not have a citation to post for you, my questions were prompted by articles I have read recently in which it is stated that sea levels have risen along certain stretches of coastline as a result of "global warming" or articles in which locale specific sea levels are predicted to rise in future. One article (in "The Week" magazine, I'll have to look up the issue) claims that sea level along the east coast of the USA between, roughly as I recall the article, New York and North Carolina has risen due to melting of ice in the arctic. Now, I'm not the brightest bulb in the string, but it seems to me there are at least two impossibilities implied in that statement.

Anyway, that's why I asked. Thanks, again, for taking the trouble to reply.

The situation of Global warming will rise up the sea-level at a generalized level instead of having localized effect. The sea-level get amounted to a certain level across the earth in parallel, in every corner of the inter-connected water bodies. Hence the GW (global warming) is pertaining to global sea-level effect.
So, if anywhere coastline get swamped, that would squarely mean every coastline are too, if it is concerned with global warning as distinct from other effects.

You are correct that if the mean sea level rises in one place it ought to rise everywhere. It may take some time however, and calculating sea level changes is tricky business. Effects such as storms, prevailing winds, and tides cause a much larger change in local sea level than does the volume of the ocean as a whole increasing by some relatively small amount. So to gather adequate data and do the analysis to demonstrate a rise in sea level over time takes a lot of work, and must be done with consistent methodology over an extended period of time. Consequently if you read a report about ocean levels rising along the east coast of the US it's because that's where the data came from that was used in that particular study. It does not mean to imply that levels aren't rising elsewhere. An analogy: if a study reports that there is a drought underway in Texas, it does not mean that there is no drought in Oklahoma.